By Garry Schalla, Development Director
Mountain Family Health Centers, in collaboration with Center for Health Progress, was pleased to present a workshop Waiting for Health Equity on November 1st and November 2nd. These 90-minute workshops were presented in Carbondale and Edwards.
From left: Jessica Nguyen-Center (CHP), Chris Lyttle (CHP), and Mountain Family Health Centers Development Director Garry Schalla.
Ensuring the health care system works for all Coloradans, Mountain Family is working to understand and address the reasons why it does not currently work for everyone. The root causes of the problem are economic, social, and racial injustices embedded in our upbringing and society. These injustices affect Coloradans’ ability to access health insurance and health care services, as well as safe housing, healthy food, reliable transportation, and other essentials needed for getting and staying healthy.
The Center for Health Progress is working to change how Colorado defines health care and how the health care system can achieve health equity by facilitating conversations with leaders around the state, building relationships with health provider systems and decision makers, and introducing these ideas into the public and political narrative. At Mountain Family Health Centers, our doors have been open to all for forty years, regardless of age, race, religion, or financial status. We believe access to affordable health care is a human right, not a privilege.
In these workshops, we utilized Center for Health Progress’s graphic novel, Waiting for Health Equity, as a tool in deepening complex conversations about the challenges Colorado faces in working towards health equity. Contact me, Development Director Garry Schalla, if your organization would like a copy of the graphic novel: gschalla@mountainfamily.org. Our thanks to all who attended these valuable conversations and we look forward to presenting Working for Health Equity 2.0 in 2019.